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Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies

an open letter to WTOP News

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 24, 2023



The author submitted the following suggestions to WTOP News today in the hopes of convincing the news outlet to stop promoting the hateful Drug War narrative.


1) regarding coverage of DC killings. In 2014, Ann Heather Thompson wrote the following in the Atlantic: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 1 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist." Yet most media outlets in the country write as if the rising inner-city gun violence 2 is inexplicable. I request that WTOP start connecting the dots between prohibition and gun violence 3 , for it was prohibition that incentivized the disastrous arming of the hood in the first place, leading to the creation of no-go shooting zones that, to America's shame, have remained in force for almost half a century now.

April 2025 Update

2) Regarding your coverage of drugs like Fentanyl and MDMA 4 and laughing gas : Please remember ALL the stakeholders in the drug debate. When we demonize drugs rather than understand them, we throw pain patients and the depressed under the bus, by forcing them to go without godsends -- or without adequate doses of godsends -- because doctors are afraid to prescribe. There's a call now for the outlawing of laughing gas . That's throwing millions of the depressed under the bus. I hope that WTOP will remind its readers, by way of context, that the philosophy of William James was inspired by his use of laughing gas 5 and that he himself said that we must study altered states in order to understand ultimate reality. "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." But disregard them we must if prohibitionists have their way.

3) Please be sceptical of anything that the DEA reports. They have a vested interest in seeing that there is always a drug problem. Their multi-billion-dollar budget depends upon it. I suggest that you have your reporters read "Synthetic Panics" before they report government drug information as gospel truth. It tells how the DEA leverages local drug misuse into a series of national crises with the help of agitprop documentaries on shows like 48 Hours. "The New Face of Fentanyl 6 , the New Face of Ice, the New Face of Crack, The New Face of PCP 7," etc. NIDA 8 is not a good source either, for they fund studies only on abuse and misuse - never on positive use, meaning they are truly a propaganda arm of the US government.

If these suggestions seem controversial, please consider that Donald Trump won the 2016 election because of the Drug War, whose draconian laws sent millions of minorities to jail, thereby depriving them of the right and/or the ability to vote. In fact, that's clearly the REAL reason for the War on Drugs: like GOP redistricting, it's a way to let the far right steal elections. 37,000 people are killed by cars every year, but we do not need to outlaw cars: we need to teach safe driving. Just so with the modern scapegoat called drugs. We have created all the problems by ensuring dangerous uncertain drug supplies for users, meanwhile absolutely refusing to teach them safe use - for the insane reason that this might encourage use. Use is not bad in itself. To say so is Christian Science.

In short, please stop reckoning without the Drug War. It has huge negative ramifications on a free society. Please start pushing back with smart coverage that connects the dots between today's problems and our disastrous drug policy. The kinds of drugs we demonize today have inspired entire religions. As Trump's propaganda-aided election has shown, America can have democracy or it can have a Drug War, but it cannot have both.



Author's Follow-up:

April 08, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




Imagine a world in which the media covered other risky activities the way that they cover drug use.

We would see the following newscasts:

Killer Horses


NEWSCASTER 1: Yet another Boulder County teenager has been killed by a horse. 15-year-old Constance Noring was riding alone on Shadow Canyon Trail last night when her palomino horse slipped and fell, precipitating both animal and rider down into a 300-foot ravine.

NEWSCASTER 2: How terrible, Bill!

NEWSCASTER 1: Apparently, Constance had been boasting to her friends just recently that she could, ahem, quote-unquote, "handle a horse."

NEWSCASTER 2: She failed to realize, Bill, that NOBODY can handle a horse.

NEWSCASTER 1: You got that right, Sue.

NEWSCASTER 2: Christopher Reeves thought HE could handle a horse.

NEWSCASTER 1: What we're saying is, kids: just say no to horses. Fair enough?

Plane Silly


NEWSCASTER 1: The slaughter continues. Yet another deadly plane crash in the U.S., this time in Michigan.

NEWSCASTER 2: That's right, Bill. Planes have killed a total of 352 passengers in the United States alone since the year 2000.

NEWSCASTER 1: That's right, Sue. It makes you wonder: when will the madness end?

NEWSCASTER 2: Not until Congress wakes up and outlaws those death traps that we call airplanes, Bill.

NEWSCASTER 1: Right enough, Sue. Right enough.

Shark Bait


NEWSCASTER 1: Sharks continue to kill with impunity along the beaches of Central Florida. Another young white shark victim has been reported in Volusia County.

NEWSCASTER 2: In today's op-ed piece, Channel 9 General Manager Ella Vader makes the case for an aggressive extermination campaign against the killer fish. Stay tuned.

NEWSCASTER 1: Before anybody starts calling the ASPCA, remember that it is the welfare of our KIDS that we are talking about here! Humph!

NEWSCASTER 2: That's right, Bill. A nation is judged by how well it takes care of its poor little innocent white children.

The Bamboozled 1980s

As much as I blame the modern media for kowtowing to the drug-demonizing ideology of the Drug War, they were worse in the 1980s, the decade in which it was considered "hip" to turn in your very parents for using substances of which politicians disapprove.

The most cringing and unforgivable act of media kowtowing to Drug War sensibilities was performed by then-NBC correspondent Tom Brokaw. I do not remember the exact words that he used, but I certainly remember the gist. He was wrapping up a drug-related story when he said something to this effect about the Drug War: "We are waging a war, after all, and we all have to do our part."

Brokaw was ahead of his time when it comes to bowing and scraping before the racist demagogues of drug prohibition. It still turns my stomach just to think of that episode. I would like to say that it turned my stomach at the time, however, I was still at least partially bamboozled in the 1980s. I always realized at some level that the Drug War was nonsense, but I still had not seen through all the misdirection and lies that the Drug Warriors were using to get me onboard -- like the most mendacious public service announcement in human history, the one in which the Partnership for a Drug Free America 9 told us that our brains would be fried by the use of the kinds of substances that had inspired entire religions.

The execs who created that lying ad should be put on trial with the DEA for working to deprive the world of godsend medicines.













Notes for essay entitled Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies: an open letter to WTOP News:

1: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
2: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
3: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
4: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
5: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
6: Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do DWP (up)
7: Kirkpatrick, Jonathan. 2023. “Filter.” Filter. October 10, 2023. https://filtermag.org/pcp-meth-news-media/. (up)
8: Blocks, NIDA. 2016. “How the NIDA Blocks Marijuana Research over and Over.” Cannabis.net. 2016. https://cannabis.net/blog/opinion/how-the-nida-blocks-marijuana-research-over-and-over. (up)
9: Horses Kill The Partnership for a Death Free America (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Americans love to blame drugs for all their problems. Young people were not dying in the streets when opiates were legal. The prohibition mindset is the problem, not drugs.

The DEA is still saying that psilocybin has no medical uses and is addictive. They should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for using such lies to keep people from using the gifts of Mother Nature.

How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.

If religious liberty existed, we would be able to use the inspiring phenethylamines created by Alexander Shulgin in the same way and for the same reasons as the Vedic people of India used soma.

Prohibitionists are responsible for the 200,000-plus killed in the US-inspired Mexican drug war in the 21st century.

Attempts to improve one's mind and mood are not crimes. The attempt to stop people from doing so is the crime.

Drug warriors aren't just deciding for us about drugs. They're telling us that we no longer need Coleridge poems, Lovecraft stories, Robin Williams, Sherlock Holmes, or the soma-inspired Hindu religion.

To say that taking SSRIs daily is better than using opium daily is a value judgement, not a scientific one.

Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.

The Drug War is the most important evil to protest, precisely because almost everybody is afraid to do so. That's a clear sign that it is a cancer on the body politic.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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